


Misinterpreting Data

by Seaward



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: First Time, Geeky, M/M, Math Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 04:55:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1292188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seaward/pseuds/Seaward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John pulled back a few inches and lowered his hand, Rodney felt something very close to despair, and he had no idea how a few minutes of touch could do that to him. He wondered if John would want to do it again and what else Rodney might have been missing through flawed data collection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Misinterpreting Data

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Diony for encouragement and helpful advice. Remaining mistakes (or flawed data!) are all mine.

"Why am I on the team where everyone else has amazing hair?" Rodney complained, mostly to kill time, on the walk back to the gate. He had wasted another day watching people with no technology beyond a water wheel fawn all over his teammates. Even the children had been patting Sheppard and Teyla on their heads. (Ronon warded off inappropriate touching with a show of teeth that definitely did not count as a smile, but no one had even approached Rodney.)

"Aw, Rodney, I like your hair." Sheppard bumped Rodney's shoulder, and the pleasure his body took in the brief contact only reminded Rodney of how rarely anyone chose to touch him. But Sheppard was back to scanning for threats in their (bucolic, serene) surroundings immediately afterward, so Rodney knew he was already dismissed from Sheppard's thoughts.

"Thank you, Colonel. The sincerity of your compliment is overwhelming."

Rodney stomped forward to walk with Ronon, who was in the lead and wouldn't bother Rodney with veiled insults that twisted Rodney's insides more than they should.

Back on Atlantis, Rodney made himself busy in the labs, and it didn't mean he was avoiding Sheppard if he didn't happen to run into him for the next twenty-four hours.

 

When Sheppard stopped to lean against Rodney's desk the next day, cocking his hips in a way that Rodney definitely did not find distracting, it didn't imply anything when Rodney waved him away one handed with the single word "working."

Sheppard took his own slow as Southern charm time before saying, very deliberately, "Well then, when you want to know why some of your data is wrong, I guess you'll have to come find me."

Rodney refused to be provoked in such a childish manner.

If it happened that only an hour and a half later Rodney wasn't quite so busy anymore, that was just coincidence. He couldn't imagine how Sheppard would know if any data were wrong, but it seemed prudent to find out what the man was on about this time.

Although Rodney considered 2100 to still be within working hours, it turned out Sheppard was already in his quarters. When the door opened, Sheppard motioned Rodney inside, and the doors closed behind him. The colonel stepped forward, close enough that it would have seemed aggressive from anyone else, but with Sheppard, it was more or less normal.

"So tell me, Colonel, what data do you imagine I have wrong—and what makes you think you would know anyway?"

Sheppard smirked. His already slouchy posture, with his hands on his hips, shifted to a hips forward arch that should have been uncomfortable for anyone over the age of twenty. It should also have looked ridiculous, but with Sheppard's gravity defying hair and ubiquitous black shirts, it worked as part of the flirty flyboy package. "It was my data, given to you. I should know."

"What?" Rodney felt his face heat as he warmed up for a rant. "I don't know what you're talking about. I haven't been working with any data from you. You haven't so much as held the life signs detector on any of our last three missions. And even if you had, I'd still be more qualified, as the lead scientist for this expedition and the smartest man in two galaxies, to determine if any data were suspect or corrupt."

"Maybe you're too suspicious and dismiss good data too quickly."

Sheppard rubbed a hand behind his neck. Rodney shouldn't have found it endearing, especially not when his scientific credentials were being insulted. However, Sheppard had a way of triggering the most contradictory reactions at the most inopportune moments.

Rodney knew he'd paused too long when Sheppard leaned in close to his ear and said, "When I said I liked your hair, I meant it."

Rodney felt his mouth drop open, because, really—Sheppard, contradictory reactions, triggering Rodney's reactions—what was a scientist to do? "Are you saying that your reaction to my hair is data you're insinuating that I dismissed too quickly?"

"Yep." Sheppard nodded, his face still very close to Rodney's.

"And what do you think I should have done with your so called data, which by the way would be a singular datum in this case, if I accepted that it was sound?"

"Data plural, one proving you wrong about your hair, extra to tell you something about me. What should you do? You could start by letting me touch your hair."

Rodney felt his face scrunching up in an expression that a top scientist probably shouldn't allow himself to show at any age, but all he could say was, "Why?"

"Because I like it."

Rodney stood still, trying to rearrange any relevant data he'd collected from Sheppard over the years into a configuration that could make sense of his current situation. While his brain was working on that, Sheppard lifted a hand and brought it up as if to touch Rodney's face or hair. He hesitated, looking squarely into Rodney's eyes, until Rodney nodded.

Then Sheppard's hand found the nape of Rodney's neck. Careful fingers with neat, short nails scratched their way up and down the back of Rodney's head, sending shivers down Rodney's spine. John's hand slid forward, grazing Rodney's earlobe, a touch that went straight to Rodney's groin, and who would have ever guessed that? From there, John's callused fingers traced Rodney's jaw and pulled him forward until he could feel John's breath on his lips. It was only natural for Rodney to stay in motion, as an object in motion will, meeting John's lips with his own, and then they were kissing.

John's lips were soft, and while they only touched Rodney's lips, a fraction of one percent of Rodney's surface area, they triggered a cascade of warmth and comfort and something resembling a mild electric current completely out of proportion to their dimensions. Rodney's enormous brain suddenly found it almost impossible to focus on anything beyond the brush of lips that turned into a damp sucking on Rodney's lower lip and then the flick of tongue over the edge of that over-sensitized lip. It pulled a sound somewhere between a breath and a moan from Rodney's throat.

When John pulled back a few inches and lowered his hand, Rodney felt something very close to despair, and he had no idea how a few minutes of touch could do that to him. He wondered if John would want to do it again and what else Rodney might have been missing through flawed data collection. Obviously, he'd missed that Sheppard was either gay or bi and was at least a little bit interested in Rodney.

"Have I been misinterpreting other data that might have led to this?" Rodney asked, opening his mysteriously closed eyes just inches from John's slightly flushed face.

"Mm-hmm." John's pupils were dilated, but there was still some rational thought behind his gaze as John met Rodney's eyes then shifted his gaze away, only to be drawn back again and again.

"Oh, well thank you for bringing that to my attention. Is there anything else you'd like me to consider?"

John shrugged and finally managed to say, "Well, yeah, but you know…"

"Your extremely laconic explanation is as frustrating as usual, or really, more so. Although I'm now realizing that when I've found that distracting in the past you may have actually intended such a reaction."

John smiled and, seriously, was he looking up at Rodney through his eyelashes on purpose? And how did a military commander who also happened to be male end up with eyelashes like those anyway?

"So let me clarify here: are you propositioning me for more than just kissing?"

John nodded, although his smirk seemed more beleaguered than coy.

"For more than just this once?"

John nodded, and now his face was serious and showed something Rodney had previously seen only when they were in danger. Could it be fear? Uncertainty? He couldn't imagine John had much experience with rejection or that John could ever have doubted Rodney would want him on whatever terms John set, but something in that look made Rodney reach for John's face, try to pull him in. John resisted, and Rodney tried to figure out what more he needed to say.

"You know I'm up for whatever you want, right?" Rodney offered.

John's eyes grew even wider at that, and Rodney wondered if John was extremely kinky or totally not. Rodney thought he could manage either way for John, but he still hadn't placed what was holding John back.

"Is this a United States military issue? Because while people may think I say whatever crosses my mind at any given moment, they fail to account for how many things are crossing my mind at all times. I have been required to keep secrets for or from one or more governments since I was ten years old, so keeping one more certainly wouldn't be an issue for me."

John's face finally relaxed as he licked his lips and said, "It won't offend your Canadian sensibilities to hide in a closet with me?"

"Of course it offends my sensibilities, but so does holding my tongue during idiotic off-world negotiations. For sex with you, I'll do it in a closet, on the floor, in the puddle jumper—Don't think I missed how your eyes lit up at that!"

And suddenly they were kissing again. John's tongue coasted the line where Rodney's lips met, and Rodney felt like his mouth melted open. John's tongue against his own and along his teeth made Rodney want to curl around John and never let go. Even aside from Rodney's cock, which was pushing optimistically for some action beyond kissing, John's kiss seemed to be rearranging Rodney's priorities. He was suddenly desperate for John's touch, for John to want him and keep wanting him, and for as much time as possible with just the two of them together. Kissing had never done this to Rodney before, but something about John's tongue in his mouth was burning through Rodney, leaving him raw and breathless even though they'd barely started. Rodney would have hated it, except he wanted it too much.

Reaching out blindly, he pulled John closer, so their bodies were jammed together and every nerve ending seemed to sing. He could feel where his knees brushed John's, and how could knees trigger a sexual response? Then John's thigh slid between Rodney's, and Rodney pushed forward into it before his brain could place a single datum.

John's tongue thrust into Rodney's mouth as if he couldn't wait long enough for sex any other way. Whatever Sheppard's failings might be with words, his body was convincing Rodney that he was very wanted, had been wanted for a long time, and John was at least as desperate at the moment as Rodney was.

If he didn't want their first time to involve both of them coming in their trousers, Rodney decided it was up to him to get them both out of their clothes. The way John was fucking his mouth with his tongue, words were simply not an option, so Rodney forced his hands in between their bodies and started unfastening John's pants. As his hands slid down the zipper, Rodney felt John hiss around his tongue, and for a moment Rodney worried he'd snagged something vital. Then John was shivering against him, and Rodney realized the hiss had been a good sound, an almost overwhelmed sound. Being able to make John shiver and hiss could be a very good thing. Sliding his hand under the waistbands at the back of John's trousers and boxers, Rodney cupped John's ass and elicited a moan. The moan vibrated through Rodney's body from where he and John were still connected mouth to mouth, and Rodney redoubled his efforts to get John undressed.

He managed to pull John's clothing down past John's very hard and leaking erection. Rodney wanted to touch, or at least look, but John seemed to have lost himself in Rodney's mouth and he wasn’t even pulling away to let them catch their breath, let alone so Rodney could watch what he was doing.

When John didn't step out of his trousers automatically, Rodney ran his foot up John's calf to his knee, encouraging him to bend his leg. Finally, John got the message and stepped out. Luckily he wasn't wearing shoes or socks. Unfortunately, Rodney was, and he was wondering if he'd have the stamina to get himself undressed. All he wanted to do right now was rub against John's cock, which was jabbing up toward Rodney's belly, setting the same pace John's tongue was using in his mouth.

Just when Rodney thought he'd give up and go for rutting against John with his clothes on, John pulled back. John tugged his own shirt off before Rodney knew what was happening and then removed Rodney's almost as fast. He started in on Rodney's trousers, dropping to his knees as he freed Rodney's cock. When John made one broad stripe with his tongue up the underside, Rodney had to think about smashed circuit boards and burnt out crystals to keep from shooting where he stood. Then John untied and pulled away Rodney's shoes, and the sight of John on his knees made Rodney's cock bounce and throb.

Rodney stepped out of the shoes and pulled John with him toward the bed. He was momentarily surprised that John let Rodney push him down and lie atop him, aligning their cocks the way Rodney wanted. Then Rodney took charge of the kissing, keeping that and the thrusts of their bodies as slow and teasing as he could, wanting their first time to last at least a couple of minutes more. When John started thrashing and moaning beneath him, Rodney felt a sharp burst of affection, amazed to see John out of control because of him.

Feeling sweat and pre-come ease the slide between them, Rodney finally picked up the pace of his thrusts and nipped a series of small bites along John's jaw. Soon John was falling apart at the seams, his come shooting between them, and Rodney followed him over. They ended up gasping together, and Rodney shifted over to the side. He didn't want to separate though. He pushed his face into John's shoulder to surround himself with the smell and sound, the shape and warmth of John pressed close. John just lay there, looking overwhelmed and far away, but Rodney reached an arm and leg to pull him tighter, and that seemed to release another flood of endorphins throughout Rodney's body. Finally, when they were both breathing normally and John looked like he might fall asleep, John turned his face and caught Rodney with a careless off-center kiss that left them both smiling like idiots. Rodney resolved right then and there to put his best effort into further data collection and interpretation to make this thing with John work.

 

Six weeks later, Rodney thought he'd figured out how to have a successful relationship. The secrecy and not getting to stay the night most times was painful, but keeping up business as usual in front of others was surprisingly easy. They'd had a long time to get used to each other, and Rodney realized that most of the usually pesky non-sex parts of a relationship were matters he and John had already worked out. There was still a lot of sexual exploring to do, but Rodney was looking forward to that and didn't want to rush John.

However, Rodney had analyzed his data so far and reached some important conclusions that he wanted to share with John. It was 2300 by the time he reached John's room. John was expecting him and was sitting on his bed reading in just boxers and a soft, nearly worn through tee shirt.

Rodney sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his shoes, and John leaned over and kissed his neck. Rodney smiled at the comfortable affection even as the touch sent small shivers down his spine and a jolt to his cock.

"Excellent intro to what I want to talk about. That sensation on my neck works for me as sexual, tactile, and emotional gratification."

"Oookay," John said, reaching his arms around Rodney's waist and chest to pull him in close.

Rodney squeezed back with one arm and said, "I made some charts to explain my data."

John kissed a trail from the back of Rodney's neck to the sensitive spot just under his ear. "You want to show me charts? Now?"

Rodney had predicted that reaction, and he smiled fondly as he brought up his most impressive chart. "You see, each color coded region represents sexual, tactile, or emotional gratification and the related body parts are marked on the x-axis. It works a little like a Venn diagram showing how strongly each body part reacts in a certain category and the degree to which reactions overlap. I'll have to ask you some questions later to collect more data on you. This first chart shows my data based on experiences with you. So, you can see that my nipples always elicit sexual gratification, quite a bit really as you see from the 70% represented in blue, whereas they only rate 30% percent for tactile gratification in yellow. I think that's due to the high density of nerve endings but the rather small surface area. Or maybe they get me keyed up so fast that after a while they stop filling the more basic need to be touched. Each of those numbers is a percentage out of a 100% potential for my theoretical maximum reaction in each category. Meanwhile the 10% red for emotional content is triggered mostly at initial contact when there's a thrill of excitement and intimacy."

John reached a hand forward and grazed his palm lightly across Rodney's right nipple, through his shirt, and Rodney leaned his head back and closes his eyes for a moment.

"So that's the emotional part?" John asked.

"That's all three. See, the red overlaps completely with the yellow and blue for nipples."

"And when I run my hand back up into your hair?" John asked as he suited actions to words and ran his hand up Rodney's body until it teased the back of Rodney's neck and finally his hair.

Rodney had trouble keeping his eyes open as he flailed at his chart. "As you see in the chart, touching my hair can elicit tactile and emotional gratification without triggering a sexual response."

"And now?" John asked, leaning in so his warm breath tickled Rodney's ear. "I think after playing with my nipples or when breathing in my ear, you can pretty much assure a sexual response to touching my hair."

John tucked up behind Rodney, his legs straddled around Rodney's hips and his chin bending over Rodney's shoulder to look down at the bulge of Rodney's cock, already past half hard in response to nipples, ears, and hair. "I can see the sexual gratification part."

"Of course, you've confounded your results now by pressing up against my ass, which you'll see has a similar color profile to nipples."

"So it does," John whispered breathily into Rodney's ear. "And look, you're penis gets a hundred percent for sex."

John ran a finger up and down Rodney's cock, causing it to press tight against his fly, and with that and the hand back on his nipples, Rodney lost the train of his presentation.

"Having a hard time concentrating?" John asked.

"If you weren't stripping away IQ points with your every movement, I would be appalled that you'd resort to such an obvious pun."

"Too many words still. Guess I need to remove your clothes."

"But you've barely looked at my charts."

"Any data you'd still like to collect?"

Rodney nodded. "Actually, I don't think you've played with my toes."

"Toes?" John's movements paused for just a moment in surprise, but he turned that into an opportunity to remove Rodney's shirt as he shifted around in front of Rodney. "What do you want me to do to your toes?"

"Touch them? Lick them? Whatever you feel comfortable with. I don't think you need to worry about me being ticklish there. To give you fair warning though, I'm a little ticklish around the arches. Oh, and I washed before coming over and put on clean socks, just in case."

"Is this some kind of fetish?"

"How could I have a toe fetish if I don't have any data yet?"

"I'm not sure fetishes are that logical."

"Mine are."

John looked at him expectantly.

"What, you weren't interested before when I suggested making 'go' and 'no go' lists."

"But now we're discussing charts," John said as he pulled Rodney's trousers and boxers down and took an opportunistic lick at the tip of Rodney's cock.

Rodney fell back onto the bed as John removed his tongue and tossed Rodney's clothing across the room. "These charts have nothing to do with fetishes."

"Unless they're body parts."

"Which mine aren't."

"I think I'd rather hear about your non body part fetishes than more charts."

"Maybe after we finish with the charts." Rodney grumbled.

"How about after I finish with your toes?" John flicked his tongue between Rodney's first and second toes and then sucked the big toe into his mouth exactly as if it were a cock.

"Oh!" Rodney swallowed back an undignified noise and watched John suck in his cheeks more than could possibly be necessary for a toe.

"Sexual gratification?" John asked, when his mouth popped off.

"Definitely."

That, along with a few more exclamations and noises, seemed to be all the encouragement John needed to provide Rodney with a wealth of data involving toes. The first foot John explored with his mouth, the second with a single finger. Rodney was amazed at the tactile potential of a single finger tracing beneath the lowest joints of his toes and then threading its way in between each pair. More riveting was how sexual the whole experience became with John. Rodney's cock was fully hard and leaking before John even began tracing and licking his way up from ankles to inner thighs.

Then John stopped. "So, fetishes, talk."

Rodney tried to scowl, but he knew he'd tell John anything at this point, so he tucked his chin and said, "Math."

"Math?" John asked. "So solving equations gets you hard?"

"No, but when you started reciting the Fibonacci sequence during _Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium_ , I might have gotten a bit turned on."

John smiled in a way that might inspire a new chart, because it hit Rodney hard for both sex and emotion. Then John started licking Rodney's cock like it was a lollipop, but instead of counting licks like some old tootsie pop commercial he used, "3, 7, 32, 127, 8191, 131071, 524287."

Rodney was panting and knew he must be red in the face when John climbed up his body and hovered over him, "Well?"

"Do you realize how few non-mathematicians memorize more than the first four Mersenne primes?"

"Did you realize my bachelor's degree at Stanford was in math?"

Rodney bucked up against John and came so hard his vision whited out. When his senses started processing again John was lying beside him, stroking his face. "You okay there?"

"God, yes. You can fuck me if you want."

John reached for the lube and settled himself between Rodney's legs. When he had two fingers in and scissoring, he asked, "Wouldn't the math thing be a kink? I thought a fetish had to be a physical object."

"You want to discuss terminology now, but you don't want to see the rest of my charts?"

John said, "Never mind," and stared down at his fingers as he started twisting them in and out of Rodney's hole.

In their current positions, Rodney couldn't see how erect John was, and John's face had blanked to hide if he was annoyed or disappointed. One of the best things about being with John was that Rodney usually didn't have to worry about what he said, but something in John's posture or the tone of John's "Never mind" seemed off. Rodney thought back over the few conversations they'd had during sex or about sex and realized that John didn't usually speak about anything like fetishes or kink. If his timing seemed odd for asking about the difference while Rodney was distracted by overwhelming sensory data, that might mean John wouldn't ask under other conditions.

Rodney wondered if the reticence was American, military, or just John, but he did his best to answer honestly regardless. "Look, I'm hoping to demonstrate my genius to you as a lover, and you know I think linguistics and social sciences are basically voodoo unworthy of my time. However, I want us to be able to talk about anything, and I'm not sure everyone agrees on what's a kink and what's a fetish. I learned the word fetish first, and it can definitely apply to situations as well as objects, so I thought of my thing as a math fetish. Since then, I've heard people use kink to describe pretty much anything, and "fetish" sometimes carries a worse connotation, so maybe it would be better to call it a math kink. Whatever the label, it's yet another way in which you are totally hot."

John didn't say anything, but he stroked three fingers directly across Rodney's prostate until Rodney started to get hard again despite how recently he'd come. Then John shifted to position himself and Rodney could see John's totally hard, slick cock just before it pushed into him. Rodney let out a long, low moan.

"I like that," John said softly.

If Rodney hadn't been cautious of misinterpreting data ever since this thing with John started, he might have found the statement obvious. He knew John liked his ass and liked this position in particular, where he could see Rodney's face while driving into him. However, he didn't think John would bother with any words at all in this situation to tell him what he already knew.

Then Rodney realized, "My moan? You like it when I make noise?"

John beamed at him, as if he thoroughly appreciated Rodney's enormous brain filling in the details from his sparse words. Rodney couldn't help but find that flattering, fascinating, and hot. There was definitely a new chart, or possibly a graph, in their future. Rodney wondered if John thought liking such sounds counted as a kink, but he was quickly distracted from any worries about words.

John was pumping harder and getting noisy himself, and that was enough to get Rodney fully hard again. John leaned forward for a very sloppy kiss, and then everything was fast and hard. When John started to come, Rodney grabbed his own cock and was right there, gasping and moaning with him.

 

They fell asleep tangled together, and Rodney didn't wake up until John's alarm went off impossibly early the next morning.

"Sorry," Rodney whispered when he opened his eyes and saw sunlight. When they were in John's room, Rodney was supposed to sneak out before morning.

"It's okay," John kissed his forehead. "I'm just going running. If you want, you can sleep until I get back and then shower together."

The chaste kiss and being allowed to stay in John's bed made Rodney feel all warm and fuzzy inside, emotional data that he'd try to remember and record when he next woke. For the time being, he burrowed back under the covers and tuned out the noises John made as he got ready to run.

 

He was awakened by John yanking the covers back saying, "Shower sex. Don't be late."

John stripped his running clothes off to leave a trail to the bathroom, and Rodney was right behind him. In the shower they started with shampoo, but scrubbing each other's scalps quickly shifted to soapy fondling of nipples and asses. Rodney ended up on his knees, a position he usually avoided, especially on hard floors. Right then, he couldn't think of much beyond John's cock in his mouth. He didn't just want to get John off; he wanted to overwhelm him with the best blow job ever until he ended up a babbling mess on the floor.

It wasn't unusual for Rodney to strive to impress, but he knew there was something more going on. He was pretty sure he was in love with John. He couldn't tell if John was in love with him, and Rodney figured John might be the last one to know if he was. Still, Rodney was rapidly concluding that being in love made it significantly more enjoyable to suck John's cock. The thought made Rodney hum, which made John jerk. Maybe it was empathy or something, but in that moment Rodney wanted to physically show John how much he cared about him, which would require a pretty spectacular blow job even by genius standards.

Rodney had his own set of tricks for giving amazing blow jobs, and over the last six weeks, he'd had time to learn what John liked. He started off light with lots of teasing around the head. Then he worked his tongue along the vein on the underside, and he started to suck in earnest. When he got to the part where he'd usually use both hand and mouth in an up and down glide, Rodney wanted to try something more. He pushed his mouth farther down John's cock and worked his throat like he was swallowing. John made a strangled noise above him, Rodney shifted a little higher on his knees, and all of a sudden the angle was perfect and Rodney figured out how to swallow with his throat right around John's cock. He still had to slide back after a few moments to get more air, but then he was right back where he wanted to be. He knew he was doing it right when John practically screamed above him and his body rippled and then went loose. Rodney held him up with firm hands to his hips as he sucked every last drop and shiver out of John and then eased him down to the shower floor.

John pulled him into a kiss that ended with Rodney mostly panting into John's mouth, but Rodney still felt pretty amazing about the whole thing. He was also extremely hard and knew he could get himself off with just a few quick pulls. John was totally out of it, collapsed on the shower floor with his eyes closed.

When Rodney reached for his own cock, he was surprised to feel John's hand tracing down his arm, following it to wrap his fingers in with Rodney's. John let Rodney choose the pace and pressure, fast and hard, but having John's hand with his made it feel like John had been building him up to this through the whole blow job, maybe even before, when he suggested Rodney stay in his bed. When Rodney came, it knocked him on his ass right there with John, and when they finally washed off, it was lazy and slow and mostly still sitting on the shower floor. It was perfect.

 

Then John disappeared to the mainland for two days to lead some training exercise. Rodney was fairly certain John hadn't mentioned it ahead of time, and John definitely didn't stop by before he left. For the most part, Rodney made good use of his extra time in lab. He worked most of the night and saved time by eating power bars instead of seeking out real meals.

Shortly before John's training squad was due back, Rodney stopped by his quarters to shower and shave. He didn't think Atlantis could run out of hot water from twenty men trying to shower at the same time, but he was cautious by nature. Afterward, he went back to work in his main lab, where he'd be easy to find.

When John hadn't sought him out by dinnertime, Rodney decided he should probably acquire real food. He ended up dining with Teyla and Ronon, but John never showed up.

 

By 2300 Rodney decided John was officially avoiding him. What hurt most was that Rodney had no idea why. As far as he could tell, their last evening and morning together had been the best ever. Rodney knew he was bad at relationships, but he was usually good at problem solving. He'd been proud of his data analysis efforts throughout his thing with John. Deciding he'd do better to collect more data than to spin his wheels hypothesizing, he went to John's room.

John was sitting on his bed, fully dressed, reading _War and Peace_. Rodney walked to within a meter of the bed and asked, "Well, what did I miss?"

John shrugged without looking up from his book. "I don't know what to say."

"You never know what to say, but you have to tell me what the problem is so I can try to fix it."

"That is the problem." The harsh edge to John's words made it sound like he was having even more trouble than usual expressing himself, but that still didn't tell Rodney what he needed to know.

Rodney perched at the end of the bed, giving John as much space as he could while trying to get a better view of his face. John's body tensed when Rodney sat down, and Rodney knew it was either a very good or a very bad idea, but he reached out his hand and grasped John's ankle where a little bit of skin showed between sock and trouser.

John shivered at the contact and then relaxed a little, not trying to hide anything with his body. Rodney took that as a positive sign and worked his hand a little way under John's BDUs to massage his calf. He felt John press into his touch.

Rodney's brain scrambled through available data. "Are you saying the problem is that you don't know what to say?"

"Yeah." Half the tension seemed to leave John's body with that one word.

"Okay." Rodney shifted farther onto the bed so that John's calves were across his lap. John was still holding his book and not making eyes contact, so Rodney just removed John's socks and attempted to convey reassurance though his touch on John's feet. He tried to remember his own tactile and emotional responses from when John touched his feet and toes. He'd been pretty turned on at the time, so much of it had turned sexual, but he thought any flirting now would either cause John to pull away or become an excuse to avoid solving the problem, whatever it was.

As Rodney worked his fingers solidly between the toes of one foot, trying not to tease, John squeezed back using his toes. It was a bizarre way to communicate by touch, but Rodney found it reassuring and tender, and it was somewhat amazing how much John seemed able to communicate on an emotional level just using his toes. Then it occurred to Rodney that John relied on touch to communicate when he was least able to speak, so he was probably waiting for Rodney to sort out the words.

"So there was something you thought you should tell me?"

"Yeah."

"Was it about something kinky you did or didn't want to do?"

"No." John sounded a lot more normal, almost disdainful, and his foot move back and forth as if he were shaking it in place of shaking his head.

Rodney's mind sorted through subjects John seemed least comfortable discussing. "Something about emotions?"

Johns foot confirmed with a clench before he even managed a "yeah."

"John," Rodney wrapped his hands securely around both feet at the arches and looked John in the face, "There is no way I'm going to get upset because you don't verbalize your emotions. That would be completely unrealistic and unfair of me. If the idea of me asking you about data to make charts upsets you, I would never push you on that. I'll give up on the charts if you want. I mean, I can't promise my brain won't collect data and sort it that way in my head, but I only made the charts because I wanted to share those insights with you. If you don't want to know or don't want to reciprocate, that's totally okay."

"No." John was back to the strained voice, and Rodney could have gotten irritated under other circumstance. But if he'd thought he might love John before, he was certain of it now, because every monosyllable seemed to be tearing Rodney apart. Rodney wondered what it said about the situation that rather than freaking out about his, possibly unrequited, love for a man he absolutely had to be able to function with as a co-worker and who he'd first kissed six weeks ago, he was freaking out about not being able to diagnose a problem based on Boolean verbal feedback.

He hugged John's legs to his chest without thinking about it.

In some freakish display of flexibility, John bent his knees and put his arms around Rodney in a cross between a hug and climbing into Rodney's lap. The fact that it was freakish and ridiculous but authentically, one hundred percent John, was what made Rodney realize he had his answer right there.

"Oh, I think I've got it."

John nodded into Rodney's neck and then started kissing and sucking in a way that was likely to force Rodney into a turtleneck for a few days. Rodney's brain was pretty well derailed, but when John finally stopped and sat still without making any other move, Rodney realized he was going to have to say it. If he was wrong it would be very bad, but he was ninety-nine percent sure he understood John's problem.

"I love you, too."

John let out a pleased moan, and Rodney found himself pushed back on the bed beneath John's hands and mouth with all the rest of John pushing against him. Just like the first time, it was all suddenly hot and heavy, and Rodney wondered if they had any chance of getting out of their clothes. He decided that this time, it didn't really matter.


End file.
